LawyerCasting

10 Email Design Tips to Maximize Readability

Following yesterday's post on why it's a bad idea for your HTML email to consist of a single graphic, we had some requests for tips on better email design.

Before providing tips, it's important to stress that you need to know your audience so you can anticipate what email applications your subscribers will be using to view your emails. If you're a "B2B" law firm (that is, catering to corporate and business clients), a majority will probably be using some version of Outlook (with a sizeable percentage probably using Lotus Notes). If you're a "B2C" law firm (that is, working primarily with individual consumers), Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and Gmail are the most popular services. Our tips below will focus on the "B2B" segment.

With Outlook the key factors to consider are that a sizeable percentage of readers will have image blocking "on" (which means they won't see your graphics until they click to activate them), and a sizeable percentage will first encounter your email through a preview pane. This means a significant portion of your email may not be visible without scrolling.

It's also important to stress that email is a "scanning" environment. That is, subscribers don't necessarily "read" emails; they scan them (Nielsen Norman Group’s usability study (Email Newsletter Usability—Third Edition, June 2006) determined that users, once engaged, spend an average of 51 seconds on each newsletter in their inbox). If the content seems interesting, they may devote more time. But you've got to grab them at the "scanning" phase.

With those environmental factors in mind, here are 10 quick law firm email design tips (after the jump) to maximize readability.

Why Your Law Firm HTML Email Announcements Should Not Be a Single Graphic

Graphics tend to be more visually appealing than HTML text (even when formatted with bolding, colors, etc.), so it's no wonder many graphic designers like to deliver major law firm announcements via email using a single, large, snazzy graphic. We don't recommended it.

As many people know, image blocking is prevalent nowadays with email applications. So until recipients with image blocking on, actually display your graphic, all they see is one big red "X". You can alleviate this issue somewhat by populating the ALT tag with descriptive text so that recipients with blocking on will see your description of the image over the blocked image. If they know the sender, and are enticed by the description, the chances are better they'll display images and see your graphic.

But there's another issue not many people are aware of. And that is that a low text-to-image ratio is a trigger on SpamAssassin to increase your score. In other words, if your email consists of a single large image, and no text, your Spam Assassin score will be higher (because your text-to-image ratio is virtually zero), and your risk of being filtered much greater. See the SpamAssassin test list and search for "HTML has a low ratio of text to image area." A higher score on SpamAssassin is something to be concerned about since SpamAssassin is one of the most widely used content filters.

Instead, a better approach is to limit use of graphics for important visuals related to the announcement, like attorney or office photos, firm logos, banner, etc. But render the text part of the message using HTML text. And put that text close to the top of the email and to the left. This way folks with image blocking on who scan emails in their preview panes can immediately read your announcement, which will make it even more likely that they'll display the images included with the message.

Top 259 Twitter Applications

Hat tip to Kevin O'Keefe who alerted his followers on Twitter to a great site called Killer Startups, which profiles new startup web applications and other websites in several categories from social networking to search to e-commerce.

Out of curiosity, I ran a search on "Twitter," which returned a navigable list of 259 new applications launched to help individuals use Twitter more effectively. Stuff ranging from Twitter buttons to Twitter polls to Twitter searches (see page 18 for a profile of Twitter itself).

Check it out - you're bound to find something useful.

Top 6 Twitter Search Tools

As Twitter use explodes, it's gotten tougher to wade through all the Tweets to find conversations of interest. Thus, it was inevitable that enterprising folks would roll out Twitter search tools that help you locate "Tweets" on subjects of interest to which you can reply (possibly gaining a Follower, and/or finding someone interesting to follow).

Here's a blog post by Ann Smarty at Search Engine Journal reviewing six of the top Twitter search tools, including the advanced search feature offered by Twitter itself.

Prediction: Google will snap up one of these upstarts sometime soon.

LinkedIn for Lawyers 101

LinkedIn is presently the most popular networking site for professionals with over 30 million registered users spanning over 150 industries (in contrast to sites like Facebook, which are used more for social networking). As explained by Wikipedia, LinkedIn allows registered users to maintain a list of people they know and trust in business, called " first degree connections." Since, in most cases, you are able to see the "connections" of your connections (called "second degree" contacts), the site provides an opportunity to expand your network of professional contacts by requesting introductions to other users, inviting other users to become "first degree" connections, or contacting other users via LinkedIn's email system (called InMail).

As an example, there may be someone who attended the same college as you many years ago (let's call him "Jim"). You and Jim were quite close, but haven't spoken in years. One day, you notice that Jim is a "second degree" connection through one your first degree contacts. You also notice that Jim is now a partner at a major law firm. Since you're quite certain Jim will remember you from your college days, you can ask Jim directly to join your network in order to reconnect (you'd want to make sure to mention your common alma mater in your invitation to Jim).

But more than just networking, LinkedIn is about "getting things done," as explained in this entertaining video from CommonCraft. As an example, suppose you need to locate an advertising firm to design the creative for a campaign you've conceived. You can query your connections on LinkedIn, and will likely secure referrals to one or more advertising executives within your extended network who can meet your needs. At the same time, in addition to asking for assistance, professionals can provide assistance to other users by responding to questions, thereby highlighting their expertise. We'll further discuss these tools later in the post. Given these benefits, LinkedIn is becoming increasingly popular among lawyers.

The remainder of this post after the jump summarizes the steps a lawyer should take to begin using LinkedIn effectively as a marketing and business development tool, and provides links to numerous online resources that attorneys will find helpful as they begin their "LinkedIn" journey.

After reading this post, should you wish further guidance in learning how to use LinkedIn and other online networking tools for marketing and business development, consider contacting us for a brief tutorial. Click here to download our "social media training" brochure.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool: Great for SEO

Plug a keyword or phrase into Google's Adwords Keyword Tool and it will tell you how many times that word or phrase was searched for on Google in a given timeframe. This data can you help determine what keywords or phrases to optimize for on your website or blog. While you may have a hunch as to what keywords and phrases people will use on Google to, say, find a lawyer in a particular area of expertise, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool will confirm (or debunk) your hunch.

The tool will also display search volume for related keywords and phrases to help you cast a wider net for the ideal keywords and phrases for your website or blog.

The Internet Now Surpasses Newspapers as a News Source

In a December 2008 survey by The Pew Research Center, 40% of respondents said they got most of their news about national and international issues from the Internet, up from just 24% in September 2007 (respondents were asked to name their top 2 news sources).

In contrast, only 35% identified newspapers as their primary news source. Pew said it was the first time since it started surveying that consumers relied more on the Internet for news than on newspapers.

But the Internet is still not numero uno - television was cited as the main source for national and international news by 70% of respondents.

However, even this is only true in the aggregate. Among younger respondents, the popularity of the Internet as a news source already rivals TV, with nearly 60% of Americans younger than 30 saying they got most of their national and international news online; the exact same percentage that said TV was their main news source.

Obviously, this is bad news for newspapers. Although good news for newspaper websites that keep up with the latest technologies.

From the standpoint of law firms, the writing on the wall is clear: static websites with stale content should be scrapped while dynamic websites and blogs that offer up fresh content to visitors on timely legal developments and trends on an ongoing basis should become the standard. Eventually all those young people migrating from TV to the Internet will become your clients.

Required Reading for Law Firm Webmasters and Bloggers: Google's SEO Guide

As my colleague, Steve Matthews at Stem Legal, announced in November, Google has released a Search Engine Optimization Starter's Guide. Steve offers a nice synopsis of the SEO "best practices" covered in the guide. Our recommendation: if you are responsible for managing a law firm website or blog, add Google's SEO guide to your reading list.

Should You Publish Articulate Blog Comments Clearly Motivated by "Link Juice"?

Many blogs permit published comments to include live URL links. Companies trying to promote their websites have tried to capitalize on this for SEO purposes by spamming blogs with incoherent comments that include URL's in order to generate inbound links back to their own websites from the blogs (as is well-known, inbound links from high quality websites and blogs helps with SEO).

Bloggers fought back by moderating comments. That is, all comments are subject to approval before being published. If a comment is spam, it gets deleted and never makes it to the published blog.

The latest trend is for companies seeking inbound links to spend time writing up semi-coherent comments that address some point in a blog post in the hope that the blogger will publish it (even though it includes a URL) because the comment actually makes sense and adds some value to the "conversation" on the blog. Some clients recently asked whether they should publish such comments - clearly intended to generate an inbound link, but yet coherent enough to add value. Learn our view after the jump (note: we are not talking here about comments submitted by peers and colleagues who are known to you, or who are known within the community that you are a part of - you should be happy to provide those folks with inbound links (and vice versa); rather, we are referring to the practice of complete strangers in businesses outside your industry who suddenly submit a well-written, coherent comment to your blog for no apparent reason other than to generate an inbound link).

Time to Build Law Firm Websites Using Flash? Not Quite

Last year, Google announced that it was developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files. A post on the official Google blog indicated that web designers could expect improved visibility of their published Flash content. Google provided an FAQ on its webmaster central blog to address questions about this development.

Later in the year, Google announced improved tracking of Flash content with its Google Analytics application.

Does this mean law firms interested in search engine optimization should now be launching Flash websites? The consensus is no, and that despite the advances, Flash still can't compete with HTML text in terms of search engine friendliness. To learn why, we recommend Flash and SEO - Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don't Mix (from the well-respected editor of SEOMoz) and Search-Friendly Flash? (from Vanessa Fox - who founded Google's Webmaster Central resource).

9 Criteria to Measure Your Law Firm's Email Marketing Reputation

As ISP's and corporate IT departments employ more sophisticated filtering tools to block spam and other unwanted email from reaching the inboxes of their employees, the risk increases that your law firm's own legitimate email alerts and newsletters will be blocked and won't reach your clients.  To minimize the risk of filtering, it's critical that firms maintain a stellar email "reputation."

To measure your law firm's email marketing reputation, you need to run a diagnostic test against one of the firm's email alerts, invites or newsletters and generate a reputation report. A thorough email reputation report will assess your email against at least the following 9 important criteria.

SEO Tips for Law Firm Blogs on Word Press

Many law firm and lawyer blogs run on Word Press, which we find is an excellent platform if you (or an employee or hired gun) have the technical skills to deploy and manage it. For those using Word Press, you should check out this article on tips to maximize the search engine visibility of your Word Press blog. The article walks through a bunch of "best practices" that would apply to any blog, and shows you how to implement them on Word Press with the appropriate plugins and code. Tips include:

• Optimizing title tags
• Optimizing description tags
• Avoiding duplicate content
• Populating ALT tags for images
• Using "bread crumbs" navigation
• and more..